


Winning Smile, Winning Paw

by anamuan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Act III, Bad Puns, Belly Rubs, Container: Pile of Filth, Diamondback - Freeform, Dogs, Gambling, Gen, Gift Giving, Mabari, POV First Person, Pets, Post Beware of Dog, Responsible Investing, Snoozles, Varric as a Financial Advisor, city guard - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 17:30:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15890715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamuan/pseuds/anamuan
Summary: A day in the life of Hawke's mabari.





	Winning Smile, Winning Paw

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lionheart](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheart/gifts).



I wake up when Hawke hits the bottom of the staircase, just long enough to see if she needs me: pricking one ear up to listen and dragging one eye open enough to watch her move through the room, but otherwise I don't move. She stops long enough to give my ears an affectionate rub, and tells me to be a good boy--as if I'm ever _not_ \--but she's standing up again before she even finishes saying it, which means there's no reason for me to roll over and try for some early morning belly rubs.

She grabs one of Orana's ready-go bags on the way out the door, so she's probably going to be out all day, and since she didn't wake me up and take me with her, she's likely going nowhere dangerous. After Hawke's gone, I doze a little longer. With Hawke out all day, the city was my chewtoy--which means a morning snoozle was first on my schedule.

Orana takes me shopping after breakfast, which ostensibly is so I can get the exercise (ha! Like an amble around the block is strenuous!) but is really so that I can growl menacingly at anyone who tries to cheat her in the market. Hardly anyone tries to take advantage anymore, since most of the merchants realized I can do math.

In the market, we run into Sebastian. I bark a greeting while he bows low. He's a good kid. He asks after our plans for the day, and I let Orana explain what we're doing. There is...something...yes! There! There's a little thing under the Orlesian cloth merchant's stall! It's naked and has gigantic ears and every one of its nervous movements shouts _CHASE ME_ , but it skitters up onto the merchant's table and takes something from his hand with its paws, so I curb my instincts. It wouldn't do to eat someone's pet.

When we get back, Sandal and I play wrestle for a while, which is always a good time. Then I take callers for the rest of the morning. I'm never entirely sure who's going to drop by until they do, because whatever Hawke is doing that day usually influences who has free time. Today, I get a surprise visitor: Knight Captain Cullen.

The Knight Captain came to see Hawke, but he's got manners, so he greets me first. None of that "your master" business either. Then, since Hawke's gone already, he pens a quick note for her and leaves it on her desk. Task finished, he turns his attention back to me for the social part of the visit.

"How are you today, serah?" he asks. I bark that I'm well, smiling. I've got a very winning smile.

"Very glad to hear it!" I allow him to pet me: he knows the best place to scratch behind my ears where it's hard to reach myself. Plus he smells like home, so between that, the scratches, and his manners, there are few humans in Kirkwall who have so much of my favour. "Have you had to dodge any fireballs on your travels lately? I saw what you did that time on the Wounded Coast. It was very impressive."

I bark agreement of his assessment of my skills, but don't regale him with my last fight. You really had to be there to appreciate it. He scratches around my collar too, and I grin and lick his fingers when he holds them for me to sniff. _Good human_ , I bark.

"Such a good boy! Well, I'm afraid I'll need to cut this visit short. I'm needed at the Viscount's keep. When Hawke comes back, please let her know I left her a note." With a few final pets, he straightens to his feet, and Bodahn lets him out.

My next caller is Varric, who wants my approval for an investment before moving my funds. I like Varric. Varric never believed that stupid adage about older dogs not being able to learn new tricks, and consequently taught me an awful lot about personal finance, some card tricks that don't require fingers, and set up a shell company for me so that I was able to to save a significant percentage of my weekly pay from the city guard in a bank account that earned interest instead of having to resort to _burying_ it in Darktown like so many of my countrydogs.

Honestly, what's a dog gotta do to get a bank account in this city? Frankly, it's discriminatory. There's no reason a dog shouldn't be allowed to save for their future!

Varric lays the purchase order on the ground where I can read it without holding my head at a weird angle. I'm a less daring investor than Varric is, so i put my paw at the line that details how many shares he thinks I should buy and shake my head.

"Too many? Yeah, I thought you might feel that way. What if we dropped it by five percent?" Varric says.

I nod approval and, after amending the contract, Varric holds out an ink pad. I carefully press the bottom of one of my toes to the ink pad, and just as carefully press it to the signature line.

Varric helps me wash the ink off my paw. "You coming to the Hanged Man tomorrow? The usual time?" I bark my assent. I don't _drink_ , but the Hanged Man is always full of interesting smells. The guy who is always mumbling to himself about the Truth stepped in something _fascinating_ last week. If it's the Truth, I'm all for it. And maybe I'll finally see a speed griffon! I've been wanting to race one.

Bodahn sees Varric out, and lets Anders in at the same time.

Anders wants to show me, and possibly Hawke, his latest manuscript. Since Hawke is out, Anders leaves a copy with me after a brief, impassioned summary of the latest updates, and asks me to show it to Hawke when she gets back. As soon as Anders leaves, I pick up the stack of paper with my mouth and take it upstairs to Hawke's bedroom. There are two rules in the house, and the first is that I'm _not_ supposed to get up on the bed. Seriously, if Anders wants to write about injustice, he should write about _that_. But _this_ is a favour for Hawke--in other words, the perfect excuse to break rule one.

Aveline comes by soon after, to pick me up on her way back from lunch. We head to the Viscount's Keep to run the afternoon training session with the new recruits. This latest litter of recruits need a _lot_ of training before I'm comfortable sending them out on their own. They're like two-week old pups, as likely to trip over their own feet as they are to land the blow they're directed to. I hound them back and forth across the yard, putting them through their paces and scenting out weaknesses. I know better than to coddle these pups--criminals certainly weren't going to.

We make good progress today. One of my more promising trainees even managed to knock me backwards during a melee, no small task when I weigh 180 pounds of pure muscle (and maybe a few extra pounds of Mabari crunch, but only a few). Tail wagging, I bark my pride to Aveline, who probably gets the gist of it, because she's Fereldan. At any rate, she praises the group and sends them off to clean up before thanking me for my work and confirming tomorrow's training schedule. I bark agreement, and head home.

Hawke isn't back yet, and it's nearing sundown, which means she's likely at the Hanged Man for dinner and drinks, and I'm early enough that I've got plenty of time to make it down to Lowtown for my standing game of diamondback. It is, as they say, time to see a dog about a man.

I head down to the Lowtown bazaar to browse a little until Lirene's Fereldan Goods reopens for the evening as my favourite place to play diamondback. A lot of the others in Lowtown stink--literally--while some of the Hightown gambling houses have actual no-dog policies, but Lirene's knows how to treat a pup.

In the bazaar, a trinket seller catches my attention, because she's got--of all things--a pot of kaddis sitting on the corner of her table. It smells the same as Hawke's, which means it's perfect. I haggle with the trinket lady for a deal because she doesn't seem to know what she's got on her hands, and then carry it in my mouth to a deserted alleyway to work it into an opening in my harness pouch.

Something in the alley catches my attention when I'm done securing my purchase--there's a pile of filth down at the end that smells interesting. I walk closer to examine it, and up close it smells even better, just begging me to dig there, so I do.

It's a pretty shallow pile, maybe something that fell from a nearby roof, so it doesn't take long for me to have dissected the entire thing. At the very bottom, I find the thing that drew me to the pile in the first place: an empty bottle stained with something that smells fantastic. It's a great find! I pick it up, but I don't think I can get it into my pouch without dropping it, and I don't know that it will survive another fall. It's such a great smell, and such a great bottle: shiny with weird splotches on the inside--I want to bring this to Hawke as a gift, so I make do by carrying it carefully in my mouth. Someone at Lirene's will be able to help me get it stowed away safely.

Lirene's is packed, and it takes a little while to flag someone down to help with the bottle because my mouth is full. Then I make my way through the crowd to my usual table. I pass Uncle Gamlen on the way; he gives me a stink-eye, while I ignore him entirely. When we moved to Hightown, I peed on the wall outside his hovel to show him what I thought of him. He's never forgiven me.

He's lucky I didn't pee on _him_.

I forget about him as soon as I get to my usual table. My luck is good tonight, after the bottle, I can feel it. I play several paws with the usual crowd, but then Tinker starts folding and Nudge is no competition on a bad day, so the game dies out. It's no fun winning when I don't even have to _try_ to bluff, and the great cards I'm being dealt are wasted on Nudge's fourth pair of priests this evening.

Tinker finally gives up for the night, and that's when the Harbormaster walks in. It's a full house by now, so with a seat open at our table, the Harbormaster joins our game. We draw for the deal, and Nudge finds her first piece of luck that evening, with the high card.

Nudge deals us each two cards. I've got the second highest hand in the game, and it's all I can do to keep my tail from wagging lest it give me away. The betting moves quickly, Nudge for once in her life folding when she ought to, leaving it a contest of wills and luck between me and the Harbormaster. I win easily and we deal again.

Nudge bows out for the evening after the second hand, and the Harbormaster and I get into it in earnest.

Dealing has always been a problem for me, I have to admit it. I know I've said it before, but it's the hands thing. It's why I don't play wicked grace as often as I'd like: cards are not designed to be held by paws. Shuffling is right out.

To get around this limitation, I set up a deal with Lirene's. Varric wrote up the contract for me because my pendogship is terrible. Essentially, I'll give the house a two percent cut from my winnings if they keep someone on hand to shuffle and deal for me--so when I rise up on my hindquarters in my seat and wave a forepaw at the bar, one of the elves that work the tables comes over to assist.

My luck holds the rest of the evening, winning hand after hand. My bluffing is great as long as my tail doesn't wiggle; I've found a lot of humans have trouble reading canine facial expressions, and the Harbormaster is either exceptionally bad at it, or he's just exceptionally bad at diamondback.

It's starting to get late, so I decide it's time to pack it in for the night when I get the worst hand of the evening. It's not bad but it's not great--decidedly middle of the pack. Still, all's not lost until the dog eats the turd. I decide to go all out. I make a big show. I hem and haw for a while, resting my head on the table top and letting out a low whine. I finally put in my two silver, and then put my head back down and sigh.

Smelling more confident, he matches my wager. I hesitate some more, picking up one forepaw and putting it back down, then the other. I nose two more silver info the pile, and whine a little more. He matches me again. The cycle repeats a couple more times, him smelling increasingly confident, until I refuse to wager again. He agrees to end the hand and we flip our cards.

My win. My tail starts wagging, I can't help it. It was a great game, and I picked up a pretty penny in the process. Every dog has its day, and today's mine. Next time Carver comes to visit, I'm going to take him for everything he's worth!

The Harbormaster is less pleased. He pushes the deck across the table in a messy pile. He stands, and glares down at me, and makes an aborted attempt to _steal my winnings_.

I growl a warning, and he pales a little and falls back, suddenly stinking of fear. He leaves the silver and exits so quickly I can practically see his tail between his legs.

I do some quick math and use a paw to divide my winnings to give the establishment their cut. I nose a tip over to the staff member who's shuffled for me all night, and set aside another silver to put in the donation box in the front room. Lirene does good work for the Fereldan community. It's only right that I help where I can.

Lirene's girl helps me put the rest of my money into a doggie bag, mindful of the stained bottle and the little pot of kaddis. After she's fastened the bag closed, I sit patiently while she fixes it to my halter and makes sure the weight is balanced and the straps are comfortable. This kind of customer service is why I come here instead of any of the other gambling establishments in town.

As I make my way through the crowded room, one of the recruits from the last litter stands up suddenly and salutes me. I bow my head a little to acknowledge the recruit and head for the door. I drop the silver in the box for orphaned Mabari puppies on the way out.

It's a little later than I'd realized when I get outside. I set immediately for Hightown, because I want to be home in time to bowl Hawke over when she gets through the door. I take the turns out of the alley Lirene's shop is nestled in, and am just about to enter the market before the stairs to Hightown when a group of thugs drops from the roofs nearby.

They don't attack right away, which is strange. Instead, they kind of mill about for a little bit, and my steps slow to a stop just because I want to see what they're going to do. They look around at each other long enough that I start back on my way--and that's when the Harbormaster comes puffing up from around a corner and shouts at them.

"What are you doing? It's going to get away!" he shouts pointing at me. One of the thugs between me and the stairs raises his sword. He nudges the guy next to him, who starts and then half-heartedly raises his sword too.

One of the archers crosses her arms and looks at the Harbormaster sternly. "You never said it were a dog! I don't hurt animals!"

"This is no simple dog! There's no way I could lose to a _dog_. It's a conman! It's probably possessed! Some kind of blood mage animal familiar!"

I bark angrily. Like I'd need to be possessed to beat _him_.

That might have been a mistake though, because the guy half-heartedly holding his sword raises it in a much more serious grip, and a few of the others who'd still been standing around like a bunch of confused pigeons bring their weapons up into attack stances. Apparently I'd raised my threat level.

I sit down and raise one of my paws in a handshake gesture. Two weapons go back down, and Half-Hearted goes back to being relaxed. The archer, who seems to be the leader of the gang the Harbormaster had hired, still has her arms crossed, and her chin is raised at a stubborn angle.

"I said no animals," she says.

"It's evil! It needs to be killed!"

I drop to all fours with my belly close to the ground in a playful stance. I start wagging my tail furiously and prance a little. One of the other arches starts to smile, then catches himself and pretends he wasn't. I let my tongue loll out and prance a little more, hopping around comically. Each hop brings me closer to the edge of the group.

I dash around one warrior holding a small battle ax, and then chase my tail in a circle that takes me almost into an empty market stall.

The leader points. "That don't look evil," she says. I wag my tail harder, tongue out as I pant, and the last thug between me and Hightown lowers his guard. That's my chance!

I jump over the stall's counter and bound for the Hightown stairs. A couple of thugs turn like they're going to give chase, but their leader isn't budging, and none of them seem to believe the Harbormaster's story, so that's all they do. I sail up the stairs without having to dodge a fireball, or even an arrow, while the Harbormaster has a meltdown in the square behind me.

Bodahn lets me in when I get home, and Orana helps me take off the halter.

"My, my, you've had a busy night!" she says, feeling the weight of my bag as the last of the buckles is undone. I bark my agreement, tail wagging. "I'll put it over here for now," she says, hanging it near my doggie bed. "Will you be wanting to go see Master Tethras tomorrow?"

I cock my head to think it over. I bark once, then twice more. First, I'm going to buy some mabari crunch. I'll deposit the rest after.

I hear something at the door, and my ear pricks up. Slowly, my tail starts to wag because it sounds like--yes!--Hawke opens the door and steps inside.

"I'm home," she says, shutting the door behind her. I bark joyously and bound across the room to put both front paws on her shoulders and give her a few licks to welcome her properly. She lifts her face, laughing, and pets me. "Were you a good boy?"

I lick her a few more times, and then drop to a sitting position before barking an affirmative.

"Good boy," she says again. "Come on then, let's go in." I follow at her heels as she walks out of the foyer into the front parlor.

"Welcome back, Messere," says Bodahn. "Enchantment!" says Sandal. I bark.

Remembering something suddenly, I paw at Hawke's foot until she looks at me, and then I walk over to her desk. I lean up enough to sniff at the note the Knight Captain had left and then sit down and bark again.

"Ah, yes, that's right. You've some letters, Messere," Bodahn says, entirely unnecessarily. I'd just told her that!

"Thank you, Bodahn," Hawke says, walking over to her desk to join me. "You too," she says, and gives my ears an affectionate rub. I roll over and demand belly rubs. I've waited all day.

After getting my fill of pets, I flop down in front of the fire for a little nap. Hawke picks up the messages that came during the day and takes them up to her room to handle. The fire is perfect with the breeze coming in off the sea. I stretch out a little more comfortably. Maybe I'll just sleep here all night...

"Bad dog!" Hawke calls from upstairs. "You know you're supposed to stay off the bed!" I can't help my grin and my tail beats against the floor twice. The second rule is that Hawke doesn't really mean the first rule.

I roll over onto my back so my paws splay in the air to sleep. It's a dog's life.


End file.
